Maternity cover contract offer - security worries

[VCsunandsky]

Hey everyone, nice to join you

I've been employed by my company for just over 2 years and they've now offered me a maternity cover position (a step up).

That's great news! But I'm really worried about what happens 10 months later - especially in these uncertain times.

Specifically:

• Am I essentially giving up my "permanent position" status for this fixed-term contract? No way to avoid that?

• If they need to make redundencies early next year, could they simply do nothing, meaning that I'm the one out of a job, rather than them having to do the redundancy thing for the whole department?

• Is there anything I can ask or negotiate to help protect me? Could the contract somehow specify that I get my old permanent position back as a minimum default? Anything else?

Please help! Really appreciated! x

You need to ask your employer these questions, nobody here will know.

If it were me, I would want the maternity cover to be a secondment, meaning you return to your current role at the end of it, assuming it is still there. I would also find it a bit unusual that a permanent employee would take an internal transfer to a fixed term contract, but you need to clarify. I would turn it down if that were the case.

Yes, in my workplace this would generally be a secondment with backfill potentially provided for your current post.

You’ll have to ask them. I would certainly be extremely cautious about accepting it as a permanent move, unless you’re very sure you won’t want to come back to your current job anyway. This type of scenario would normally be a temporary move, with the original role backfilled on a short term basis, so the maternity cover person had a job to go back to. That’s what I’d be asking for.

If they won’t do that, you should ensure that there is something confirming that if at the end of the maternity cover there is no suitable role available for you, you’ll get redundancy pay. From a legal point of view you wouldn’t be entitled to redundancy pay because the role you will have been in will still be there, so make sure you negotiate that beforehand.

At my place of work if you're permanent it doesn't matter what contract you take on, as you carry your permanency with you wherever you move to within the company. Make sure to check that this is case and you can move back to your old position. If not I won't take it.

You need to ask your company. I'm in this situation at work. But it is essentially a secondment and maternity cover employed for the back fill